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Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Musical Alchemy of Jeff Bridges
One of the greatest things about acting is that it gives thespians a platform to explore their other creative pursuits. Iconic film and TV figure Lloyd Bridges imparted this to his sons, Beau and Jeff — who both got their start appearing on their dad's hit TV show, Sea Hunt, as children. 'He was so encouraging to all his kids to go into acting because he loved it so much,' Bridges says of his father. 'At the time, I said, 'Gee, Dad, I don't know. I like music.' And he said, 'Don't be ridiculous. You'll get a chance to do your music.' And he was right.' Bridges won the Oscar for his lead role as alcoholic country singer 'Bad Blake' in 2009's Crazy Heart. 'With Crazy Heart, it popped up,' Bridges says of his opportunities to incorporate his singing talent. Currently streaming on Hulu, the drama is a compelling character study that still holds up, with Bridges embodying the role with raw emotion and subtle realism. He adds, 'But this music thing has always been bubbling inside me.'He says that he was heavily influenced by his brother Beau. "He grew up in the era just before eight years older. So out of his room, I'd hear, you know, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and those guys," he says. 'It's hard to beat that original sound, but my generation was the Beatles, Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Leonard Cohen— all these really incredible artists. Also, there's Motown. Every era probably thinks they've got the best music but my era was really something. Then shortly after that, there was Captain Beefheart which I really got into." His best-known role as 'The Dude' in the L.A.-based Coen Brothers' 1998 classic The Big Lebowski also opened a door for him, musically. Afterward, he recorded and toured with his band, The Abiders — a reference to his character Jeffrey Lebowski's famous line, 'The Dude abides.' And he made music after Crazy Heart with frequent collaborator T Bone Burnett and composer pal Keefus Ciancia — with whom he worked on an experimental project called Sleeping a session, Ciancia fell in love with one of Bridges' old cassettes from the 1970s and gave it to a friend at Light in the Attic Records. On Record Store Day (April 12), the label will release the record Jeff Bridges: Slow Magic 1977-1978, featuring previously unreleased material culled from that tape.'It brought together all of my old friends going back like 50 years,' Bridges says of Slow Magic, naming collaborators like John Goodwin, Steve Bain and Burgess Meredith. 'A lot of the history of the album has to do with these Wednesday night jams. We played music at my friend Steve's house and we'd make up songs — the rule was, no songs that had been recorded before.'He admits, 'Things got pretty crazy back then. We were all experimenting with drugs at that time. But I was also writing my own songs, so I invited those guys to come over to a little studio I had to record. That's the majority of what this album is about.' In addition to the fun flashback of his music release, out digitally and on transparent blue vinyl for Record Store Day, Bridges is excited for 'An Evening with The Dude,' a special screening of The Big Lebowski on April 16 at the Orpheum Downtown. The event will combine a screening of the film with a showcase of Bridges' other creative passion — photography — featuring images he took on the set of the beloved comedy's cast and crew, such as the shot above with Sam is also anticipating the release of the new Tron: Ares, in which he returns as video game creator Kevin Flynn as Jared Leto takes the lead role in the hi-tech fantasy. "Talk about music. Jared Leto—he's a great actor but his music is terrific," adds Bridges."When we did the original, we shot it 70 millimeter, black and white. And then it was all hand tinted by these women in Korea," Bridges reminisces about Tron. "The second Tron, I got scanned, and they put me into the computer, and they made a young version of myself. Now this next version is using all of the modern technology to make it even more thrilling and, you know, exciting. I have a smaller part, but it was great to be a part of the legacy."Sadly, his acclaimed FX/Hulu TV series The Old Man is not being renewed, but that leaves Bridges more time for his creative pursuits and humanitarian work with projects like No Kid Hungry. In addition to his music and photography, Bridges also paints, make ceramics and writes books. "It's all kind of coming from the same spot, which is getting out of the way and letting the thing come through, whatever wants to be born," he says. "you never know what's going to happen."More at
Los Angeles Times
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Dude really rocks: Jeff Bridges leans into raw truth of his music on the old/new songs of ‘Slow Magic'
With his extraordinary acting prowess, it's no surprise that Jeff Bridges made 'the Dude' as iconic as the greatest rock stars. However, most fans of 'The Big Lebowski' probably aren't aware that Bridges is a real rocker in his own right, a gifted singer-songwriter who plays both guitar and piano. Beyond his acclaimed performances in classic films like 'Starman' and 'The Last Picture Show,' cult hits like 'The Fisher King' and his unforgettable turn in 'Crazy Heart,' the legendary actor boasts a music résumé that rivals most full-time musicians'. Bridges released his debut album, 'Be Here Soon,' in 2000. He also co-produced the record with Chris Pelonis and the Doobie Brothers' Michael McDonald, who sang guest vocals, along with David Crosby. His 2011 self-titled follow-up album, produced by T Bone Burnett, made waves, landing on the Billboard 200 as well as country, folk and rock charts. Ahead of the album's release, Bridges performed at the Troubadour, where he was introduced onstage by Quincy Jones, who told the star-studded crowd (Jackson Browne among them) that music is Bridges' 'true calling.' Bridges even has his own signature models of Breedlove guitars. Now, Bridges is poised to release 'Slow Magic, 1977-1978,' his first record since his 2015 spoken-word/ambient album, 'Sleeping Tapes.' The 10-year gap between records might seem like a long time, but these songs actually have been waiting almost 50 years to make their debut. 'Time is so bizarre. I can't believe we recorded this half a century ago,' Bridges, 75, says during a Zoom call, wearing a brown cable-knit sweater, with his reading glasses perched on his nose, and sporting a bushy white beard. Sitting in his garage-turned-ceramics studio that doubles as a jam space, at his home in Santa Barbara, surrounded by framed photos, artwork and various mementos, including a 'The Big Lebowski'-themed bandanna, Bridges seems just as incredulous that 'Slow Magic' is even coming out. He explains that the journey to release it was rather unexpected. He credits Keefus Ciancia, his 'Sleeping Tapes' collaborator, for the record making its long-overdue public debut. Bridges had played the decades-old cassette of his songs for Ciancia, who, without Bridges' knowledge, passed it along to Matt Sullivan, founder of indie label Light in the Attic, who was eager to release it. Bridges was stunned but delighted. For fans of Bridges' films, 'Slow Magic' is a rare treat, offering a glimpse into a more personal side of his life that was previously hidden from the public eye. In his 20s, as his big-screen career was taking off — with two Oscar nominations, for 'The Last Picture Show' and 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,' already under his belt — Bridges would join a group of his high school friends for weekly nighttime jam sessions. Keeping the vibe loose and spontaneous, they drank whiskey and improvised instrumentals. 'Occasionally we'd spout words,' Bridges recalls. 'And people who didn't play a particular instrument were encouraged to play that instrument.' And, man, were they high. How high? 'Pretty damn high,' Bridges says, laughing, recalling late-nights fueled by pot, quaaludes, cocaine and psychedelics. After all, he notes, it was the '70s, a time of experimentation. Inspired by these sessions, Bridges would write songs on his own, recording them between film shoots. To co-produce the tracks, he enlisted Ken Lauber, who had arranged and composed the music for 1975 film 'Hearts of the West,' in which Bridges starred. It's rumored that Lauber, who also had worked with Bob Dylan and the Band, contemplated the latter to back Bridges on the recordings, but instead chose Bridges' crew of jammers due to their unique, irreplaceable chemistry. Clocking in at approximately 40 minutes, 'Slow Magic' offers an eclectic ride, reflecting Bridges' diverse influences — spanning from Captain Beefheart and Motown to the Beatles, Moondog, the Rolling Stones and Dylan. The lead single, the self-satirizing 'Obnoxious,' released in February, finds Bridges singing hilariously about self-indulgence, eating and drinking excessively, and popping pills. The album also features a pair of atmospheric instrumentals, 'Space 1' and 'Space 2,' co-written by the jammers. The album's highlights include the soulful, sax-infused title track, 'Slow Magic'; the Band-esque 'This Is the One'; a blissful love song Bridges wrote about his wife, Susan; and the upbeat, radio-friendly 'You Could Be Ready.' The record closes with the epic eight-minute 'Kong,' which Bridges wrote after director John Guillermin rejected his idea for an alternate ending to the 1976 'King Kong' remake, in which Bridges starred. In his version, the giant monkey turns out to be a machine. The song features the disco-inspired chorus 'Do the King Kong, baby,' with actor Burgess Meredith simulating the historic Hindenburg disaster radio broadcast as he narrates the massive ape-machine's fiery crash to the ground. The bananas track was detailed in Rolling Stone in 1977, when Bridges graced the magazine's cover to promote the sci-fi fantasy blockbuster. Titled 'What Is Jeff Bridges Afraid of?,' the article chronicles his relentless self-doubt and anxiety, which Bridges confesses still plague him to this day. It's an admission that seems curiously at odds with his laid-back demeanor, though. 'I think maybe what you're seeing these days is a version where I've covered a lot of that up. All of those fears are still going on, but I polish that shit out,' Bridges says. 'I don't think I've changed much. I feel about the same.' While he acknowledges his 'pretty good reputation of being well-liked,' he reveals, 'Liking myself, having understanding, affection and empathy for myself — that's what I could use some work on.' What's more, he shares that as an actor he's imprisoned by his perfectionism, which he describes as 'a self-imposed hell.' 'Creatively, the sweet spot comes from getting out of the way and letting things come through you,' he says. 'And my anxiety comes from feeling that I've got to do it 'just right,' but I don't know if I have the goods to come up with … so that's what I struggle with.' To illustrate his point, he references 'The Big Lebowski.' ''Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats you,'' Bridges says, laughing as he delivers the famous line just like actor Sam Elliott in the film, his Southern drawl turning 'bear' into 'bar.' It's humor that helps to alleviate his anxiety, he says, which includes laughing at himself 'for being so ridiculous about it all.' What's more, Bridges expresses gratitude for his wife's frequent reminders to lighten up and have fun. 'And then it's like, oh yeah, I forgot — joy. The miracle is available. It's right there, going on all the time,' he says. It's miraculous that Bridges is even alive. In 2020, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Meanwhile, as he battled cancer, he contracted COVID, which, he says, left him 'on death's doorstep.' In remission since 2021, he says his latest CT scan showed no trace of the cancer, making it especially poignant that Bridges is currently learning to play Leonard Cohen's 'Waiting for the Miracle' on guitar. Self-taught on the instrument, which he first picked up at 14, Bridges began writing songs soon after. When Bridges was 20, Quincy Jones put his song 'Lost in Space' in the 1969 film 'John and Mary,' starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow. Bridges calls it an 'amazingly cool' moment. Still, he says he didn't fantasize about becoming a professional musician. Passionate about ceramics, painting, photography and music, he reveals that he was never particularly career-driven. 'I've never really been an ambitious person. I never had that kind of drive,' he says. Even acting was not initially a goal for Bridges, who admits he feared the scrutiny of following in the footsteps of his famous father, Lloyd, who was best known for starring in the TV series 'Sea Hunt.' 'I had a desire to share what I had to offer, but I didn't want to be labeled … what do they call it? ... 'Nepo baby,'' Bridges says. 'I could understand why people would resent that, and I didn't want to be resented.' Nonetheless, his father encouraged him to pursue acting, pointing out that it would bridge his various interests, allowing him to play a musician in a film someday. Truer words were never spoken. In 1989, Bridges starred in the critically lauded 'The Fabulous Baker Boys' alongside his older brother, Beau, as a waning lounge act duo of piano-playing siblings who hire a talented, beautiful singer, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, to revitalize their act. After his success in 'The Fabulous Baker Boys,' Bridges took a sharp turn in 2005 with his next musician character, embracing a darker role in 'Tideland,' portraying an electric guitar-toting, drug-addled failed rock star in Terry Gilliam's surreal tale. But it was his captivating, starring turn as chainsmoking, alcoholic, washed-up country star Otis 'Bad' Blake in the heart-stirring, redemptive 'Crazy Heart' several years later that earned him Oscar gold, as well as a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and an Independent Spirit Award. Ironically, Bridges initially passed on the part. It felt too risky to play a role so personal to him. 'Subconsciously, I think I was turning it down because playing something that was so dear to my heart … exploring my [kind of] music and stuff … if you keep it in the dream world, you're safe,' he says. 'But when it becomes real, you know you could easily fail, and all of your dreams could be shattered.' The turning point came when Bridges ran into Burnett, who was set to oversee the film's music, and encouraged him to take the role. 'I thought, 'Wow, this is too cool of an invitation,'' Bridges reflects. 'So, I said, 'F— it. I'm just gonna do it.'' It was music to the ears of 'Crazy Heart' director Scott Cooper. 'Jeff changed my life by saying yes to a screenplay that I wrote specifically for him,' Cooper, who made his directorial debut with the film, tells The Times. 'I was somewhat besieged by other actors to play the part — all of whom are great actors and movie stars — but which actor can portray an incredibly flawed character, make us see ourselves in that character and, in the end, uplift us? For me, it was only Jeff Bridges.' Even when Bridges isn't playing a musician, his cinematic path often intersects with music, whether it's his cover of Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire' with Kim Carnes that plays over the opening scene of 'The Contender' or his role in 'Masked and Anonymous,' acting alongside his longtime musical hero, Dylan, who co-wrote the 2003 film. Bridges recalls a particularly surreal moment when the music icon came knock-knock-knockin' on his trailer door, guitar in hand, for an impromptu jam. Initially trembling with nerves, Bridges says he felt increasingly at ease playing music with Dylan, finding him to be disarmingly down to earth. 'It's a great blessing to just be alive with that guy,' he says. 'It's like being alive during Shakespeare's time.' Bridges has crossed professional paths more than once with Dylan, whose song 'The Man in Me' plays during the opening titles of 'The Big Lebowski' and a later scene as well. Soon, Bridges will host a series of 'The Big Lebowski' screenings on the West Coast. 'They'll show the movie, and then I'll do a talk and show my experience through the photographs that I took during [the making of] it,' he says. In the meantime, as he contemplates what's next after the cancellation of his TV series 'The Old Man,' Bridges says 'Slow Magic' has reignited his desire to make music. He's thinking about getting in touch with 'Kenny Lauber and some of the old guys' to reunite the group. As Bridges tells it, playing with a band allows him to act out his long-standing 'Beatles fantasy,' and remains one of his most rewarding roles.
Forbes
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Adolescence' Dad To Star As Bruce Springsteen's Father In Boss Biopic
LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 12: Stephen Graham attends a special screening of "Adolescence" at BAFTA ... More Piccadilly on March 12, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage) Adolescence star Stephen Graham's next big role will be playing the father of Bruce Springsteen in the rock icon's biopic starring Jeremy Allen White as The Boss. Graham plays Eddie Miller, the father of Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), a 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a female classmate to death in Netflix's hit drama Adolescence. The four-episode limited series chronicles in real-time four separate days in the case, which begins with the arrest and interrogation of Jamie, and concludes 13 months later with Eddie and his family still trying to cope with the tragedy as the teen prepares to go to trial. While Graham, Cooper and company continue to win accolades for Adolescence, the veteran film and television actor continues his work as Douglas 'Dutch' Springsteen on Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper's Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere opposite The Bear star White. The logline for Deliver Me from Nowhere notes that the film follows 'Bruce Springsteen's journey crafting his 1982 album Nebraska, which emerged as he recorded Born in the USA with the E Street Band.' Deliver Me from Nowhere also stars Gaby Hoffmann, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz and Marc Maron. ROCKAWAY, NJ - NOVEMBER 01: Stephen Graham and Bruce Springsteen are seen on the set of the Bruce ... More Springsteen biopic "Deliver Me From Nowhere" on November 1, 2024 in Rockaway, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/GC Images) During a recent interview with the podcast Soundtracking (via The Guardian), Stephen Graham shared with host Edith Bowman a personal text he received from Bruce Springsteen after his work on Deliver Me from Nowhere. 'He's a working-class hero. He's an icon to thousands, to millions,' Graham told Bowman of Springsteen. 'And his text just said, 'Thank you so much. You know, my father passed away a while ago and I felt like I saw him today and thank you for giving me that memory.'' Graham said he was overcome with emotion while reading the text from the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. 'I was crying reading the text, do you know what I mean? Oh mate, it was beautiful,' Graham told Bowman. 'You couldn't ask for anything more, you know, to share that with someone was gorgeous. He's a lovely man.' Per Variety, Deliver Me from Nowhere started production in October of 2024 and is set to be released sometime in 2025. Meanwhile, viewers can see Graham in Adolescence on Netflix. The limited series, which debuted atop Netflix's Global TV shows chart four days after its March 13 release, placed No. 1 again in its second week of release with 42 million views, which equates to 161 million hours viewed. In addition to Graham and Owen Cooper, Adolescence stars Ashley Walters and Faye Marsay as detectives Luke Bascombe and Misha Frank, Erin Doherty as child psychologist Briony Ariston, Christine Tremarco as Eddie's wife, Manda, and Amelie Pease and their daughter and Jamie's sister, Lisa. All four episodes of Adolescence are streaming on Netflix.
The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Emotions? They're no big thing, man!' Jeff Bridges on satisfaction, silver linings – and his secret life in music
A rainy day in Santa Barbara, and Jeff Bridges sits in his garage, wondering where his favourite spectacles have got to. We are in the middle of a rangy conversation on a video call, meandering our way from Bob Dylan to the anthropomorphism of bees, via Crazy Heart, Cutter's Way and The Big Lebowski. There are sidetracks and double-backs and loose threads. Intermittently, an unseen assistant hands the actor pairs of glasses seemingly identical to the ones he is already wearing. Bridges, in a soft brown cardigan, inspects each pair and dismisses them. 'Where was I?' he asks. The garage here serves as Bridges' jam space and ceramics workshop. He has drums set up for his grandson, and a picture of Captain Beefheart on the wall. Since December, when his FX series The Old Man was cancelled, the 75-year-old has been spending more of his days here. 'Now I've got some time for letting some other things bubble up and I'm really happy about that,' he says. 'A lot of music, some more art stuff.' Bridges is good at finding the silver lining. Mention the recent loss of his Malibu home in the Los Angeles fires, for instance, and he is sanguine. 'We've lost five homes to fires, earthquakes, floods. We're waiting for the locusts,' he says. His 2020 diagnosis and subsequent treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma – or, in Bridges words, 'some real health issues' – is mentioned only in passing, as the catalyst for him to release more music: 'Hey,' he reasons, 'if you've got some stuff that you want to share, now's the time, man!' I tell him how despite it all he seems remarkably chipper, and he smiles. 'Absolutely,' he says. 'I'm happy.' The primary focus of our conversation today is intended to be Slow Magic, a collection of Bridges songs lost for close to 50 years and now due to be released on Record Store Day. The way the release came about, he says, 'is so mysterious and wonderful to me. Shall I give you a little history?' He launches into a story that involves the musicians Keefus Ciancia and T Bone Burnett, a Squarespace advertisement for the Super Bowl, the 1975 comedy Hearts of the West, the New Age music charts, and a single cassette tape of some tunes Bridges had set down with some old high school buddies, labelled 'July 1978'. One soon grasps that much of Bridges' life has moved this way, in bursts of what we might regard as cosmic serendipity and connection. Bridges was born into a well-known Hollywood family. His mother, Dorothy, and his father, Lloyd, were both actors, as was his older brother, Beau. Although the young Jeff showed promise in art and music, his father encouraged him to join the family business, taking him along to set, securing him minor roles on his productions. 'I had questions about what I was going to do, and my dad would say: 'Jeff, don't be ridiculous, that's the wonderful thing about acting, it's going to call upon all of your interests.'' All the family loved music. They would sit around the piano, singing show tunes together. One of Bridges' earliest memories involves the Broadway composer Meredith Willson visiting the family home to try to persuade his father to take the lead role in The Music Man. 'His wife, Rini, was playing the piano and Meredith Willson was coming up to me singing: 'You got trouble! Right here in River City!'' He was a teenager in the 1960s, just as music shifted gear from the early rock'n'roll of Chuck Berry and the Everly Brothers to the likes of the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. 'I mean every day, can you imagine, waking up going to school and here are the new Beatles songs?' he says. 'And that happened over and over! You take it for granted, kind of, but it's amazing!' Bridges' high school was largely made up of the children of the entertainment industry. He hung out with an artsy bohemian crowd, rather than the jocks, each school day starting by getting stoned in his Buick while he and his buddies listened to the radio: '[There was] a lot of drug experimentation you know, during those times.' On Wednesday evenings, a group of them would meet for a jam session at his friend Steve Baim's home. 'There was a main rule that there were no songs allowed,' Bridges says. 'Singing was encouraged, and making up songs, but nothing that would be played on the radio or anything like that. Just a big jam session.' As they left high school and moved through their lives, the Wednesday Night Jams continued – a way of rooting the group in their city, their friendship and their creativity. At some point around 1977, Bridges, who had been writing music alongside acting, invited his friends over to record some of his tunes. 'And the album is a result of that.' Despite his father's advice, music had always remained an alluring and viable career path for Bridges. In the late 60s he even sold two songs to Quincy Jones, who used one of them, Lost in Space, for the soundtrack of John and Mary, starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow. As time went on, the indecision continued. 'I'd done 10 movies, I'd been nominated for an Academy Award [best supporting actor for The Last Picture Show, 1971], and I still wasn't…' He pauses, and his eyes glance off to the assistant once more. 'Oh thank you dear, I appreciate that,' he says, taking the latest pair of spectacles. 'Those are the ones!' He says, then looks at them more closely. 'No, these are not the ones!' Something of a shift happened after making 1973 motor sports movie The Last American Hero. 'I had a great time making it, but usually after a movie your pretend muscle gets exhausted,' Bridges says. 'You don't want to pretend any more, you just want to be who you really are and not be in character.' Shortly after filming wrapped, his agent was approached by the director John Frankenheimer with a part in his adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Bridges knew it would be a big deal – Frederic March, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin were already signed up. Nevertheless, he was unsure. He told his agent to turn down the role. Five minutes later, he received a call from Lamont Johnson, director of The Last American Hero. 'He said: 'I heard you turned down The Iceman Cometh?' I said 'Yeah Monty, I'm bushed, man.' And he says, 'You're bushed? You're an ass!' And he hung up on me!' Bridges took stock and decided 'to do a little experiment on myself and go kind of against what my intuition is telling me'. He took the role, loved the movie, and decided he would throw his hat fully into the acting ring. It was an early example of Bridges exploring what he regards as the resistant element in himself. 'I find I have a lot of resistance, that's kind of how I roll,' he says. 'To do a movie, to bring me to the party, I resist, I resist. And there's such satisfaction in exploring that resistance and getting on the other side, not being afraid of it.' Lately, he has been examining his resistance to cold. 'I'm getting into the cold-plunging, I've been doing that for a while, and my relationship with cold has shifted a bit,' he says. 'Normally you think of cold as an enemy, but it's just a feeling. All of those different emotions that come up, they're no big thing man! Come on!' He was always this way, he says, always resistant. 'I don't think I've changed much since I was a little kid. I feel basically the same.' I ask Bridges how he would describe himself at his essence, and he leans back in his chair and thinks. After a moment, he smiles, broadly. 'Frightened, and game.' He is reluctant to be drawn on how different his relationship with music might be to his relationship with acting – whether it still holds any of that same resistance, if it requires him to use his 'pretend' muscle. 'It's a facet of myself,' he says. 'I don't think we ultimately know who we really are all the time. The task for all these different things, whether it's acting, music, painting, ceramics, the main task is getting out of the way, letting the thing come through you. And it can be frightening sometimes. But sometimes it just has its way with you, and when that happens, man it's a gas! And when it happens with a bunch of other artists and you're all doing it together, it's real magic. It's the magic of trees and flowers.' Music has often been the thing that has glued together the various facets of himself, and connected Bridges to others. 'Whether it's making a movie or music, you're harmonising,' he says. 'You're saying: let's combine our strengths here and see what we can come up with and make it beautiful and real.' Often, he will make a playlist for the character he's playing (for the Dude in The Big Lebowski, it was 'a lot of Creedence'). 'Then you play them in the makeup trailer,' he says. 'You get made up with all the guys in the show, you make that transition from who you are back into your characters. You get painted, you share music.' He recalls shooting 1984's Against All Odds in Mexico with Taylor Hackford, and how on their first night in Mexico 'we split a bottle of tequila, and went through the whole Beatles catalogue'. How, stuck for nine months on the set of Heaven's Gate in Montana, Kris Kristofferson and T Bone Burnett invited a string of musical friends to join them. 'And we would just jam all the time. When we weren't working, we were playing.' Later, when he was offered the lead in Crazy Heart, playing an alcoholic country singer trying to turn his life around, he took the part because Burnett signed on to write the score. In 2003, Bridges appeared alongside Bob Dylan in Masked and Anonymous. One day the director, Larry Charles, made a suggestion: 'Why don't you and Bob go off and you teach Bob some acting? Go and do some improvisation or something.' Bridges, resistant, eventually agreed. 'He was so great to work with,' he says. 'He's such an incredible actor. I mean his presence, right?' Not long afterwards, Bridges was in his trailer, playing guitar, when Dylan appeared in the doorway. 'He said 'Hey man, you want to jam?'' Bridges still looks flabbergasted. I ask if he saw A Complete Unknown. 'Yeah, yeah,' he says. 'They all did such a great job but …' He seems puzzled by the film's existence. 'You know, you got the real thing …' Lately, Bridges has been spending a little time going through what he calls his 'song mine', wondering what to do with all the tunes he's written. He is still writing. The songs fill his notebooks and his GarageBand files. Sometimes he sets them down with Cianca in their band the Abiders. Sometimes he puts them out as rough sketches on his website under the banner Emergent Behaviour. He asks only that if you dig them, you might make a donation to his chosen charities, No Kid Hungry and the Amazon Conservation Team. 'Let's create beautifully together,' the website suggests. 'I wrote a song recently about my old buddy John Goodwin,' Bridges tells me. He and Goodwin grew up in the same neighbourhood, and Goodwin became a professional songwriter – he provided material for the Crazy Heart soundtrack, which won an Oscar and two Grammys, and for Bridges' self-titled 2011 album, recorded after the film's success. Bridges has called his Goodwin tribute song We Know That One. 'I don't know what style you'd call it. It's my own style, kind of. Let me see if I can find it …' He picks up a tablet, peers at the screen. 'All right. Let's see here. Scrolling, scrolling, music, lyrics, my lyrics, my chorus, lyrics …' In the quiet of his garage, Bridges leans far back in his chair, hands behind his head, and begins to sing. His voice is dusky, and warm and kind, and as he sings, something about him seems to glow. The music is having its way with him, and it is real magic; the magic of trees and flowers. 'From the top it looks deep, from the bottom it looks high, Dive into the lake through the reflection of the sky. No need feeling lonely Johnny, on this road heading home, We're all heading that way, no one's really alone. Can't you hear us laughing as we cover our gold with the ashes, Our freedom, yeah we're ditching our souls. Johnny can't you see we use hilarity to numb. I think we're just too damn sensitive Johnny, we couldn't be that dumb. Do we need some kind of friction? Do we need some kind of brakes? Something dragging in the dirt, is that what it takes to get us home Johnny, get us home safe? In that case, maybe laughing ain't too bad while we wait. I can feel my soul waiting for me up ahead, tapping his foot, he's covered all bets. He's waiting with yours Johnny, they're playing in the sun, Hear that tune they're playing, we know that one …' Slow Magic, 1977-78 will be released on Light in the Attic on 12 April
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Neil Young to Headline London's Hyde Park in July
Neil Young has joined the lineup for the annual BST Hyde Park summer concert series in London. Young, along with his band Chrome Hearts, will headline the outdoor stage on July 11. Young will be supported by Yusuf/Cat Stevens and Van Morrison, with more musicians to be announced. Young last performed at BST Hyde Park in 2019 as a co-headliner with Bob Dylan. He also played the concert series in 2014 with Crazy Heart. More from Rolling Stone Sabrina Carpenter's 'Short n' Sweet' Tour Is Getting Longer and Sweeter With New U.S. Dates Sabrina Carpenter's 'Sweet and Sophisticated' Candy Bar Perfumes Are Finally Back in Stock Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox, Kate Bush Release Silent Album to Protest Proposed U.K. AI Law An Amex pre-sale kicks off today, while the official BST pre-sale opens on March 3 at 10 a.m. GMT. Tickets go on sale to the general public on March 5 at 10 a.m. GMT. The musician joins previously-announced BST Hyde Park 2025 headliners Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, and Jeff Lynne's ELO. Carpenter, who is performing on July 5 and 6, recently added a second show after her first sold out. The Hyde Park concert is part of a longer world tour for Young and Chrome Hearts in support of their upcoming LP, Talkin' to the Trees. The tour, dubbed Love Earth, kicks off June 18 in Rättvik, Sweden, and wraps up Sept. 15 in Los Angeles. Young will also take the stage at Glastonbury, which runs June 26 through June 29 at Worthy Farm in Somerset, England. 'Music unites!' Young wrote on his official website. 'We will be there with you! Join us as we celebrate the Summer of Democracy. Old songs and new songs. Old words and new words. Long jams! We will come together this summer. The Chrome Hearts and I are ready for you! LOVE and Democracy reigns in the USA and the world.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
